Grand Prix: Fressinet Takes Down Grischuk

Alexander Grischuk, one of the favourites to win the Grand Prix in Élancourt (near Paris), suffered an early loss against Laurent Fressinet in the second round on Monday. The Frenchman played the rare move 4.Bf4 against Grischuk's Queen's Indian, but the ending was not so clear. When Grischuk got into timetrouble, Fressinet outplayed him and won on move 44. The other five games ended in draws and so Fressinet shares the lead with Boris Gelfand.

Again five out of six games at the Grand Prix ended in draws, but this time two of those "fights" ended very quickly. Etienne Bacrot and Vassily Ivanchuk were barely out of the opening when they started to repeat moves. An alternative for Black would have been 17...c5.

Tomashevsky-Gelfand lasted a bit longer, but these players also followed theory for quite a while (in this case a 1970 game!). In this line in the Grünfeld White gives his queen for a rook and a knight, but ends up with the bishop pair (especially a monster on c3) and better development. Unfortunately, just after this appeared on the board, the moves were repeated here too.

The big game of the round was Fressinet-Grischuk, the only decisive game in fact. When three players (Peter Svidler, Sergey Karjakin and Teimour Radjabov) withdrew from this event, it was logical to invite some local heros. Earlier this year, at the Alekhine Memorial, Fressinet once again showed that he can compete with the very best, and he did so too in round 2 against Grischuk.

This result was good news for Caruana. As mentioned before, if either the Italian or Grischuk wins this tournament outright, he will surpass Shakhriyar Mamedyarov in the final standings of the overall Grand Prix to qualify for the 2014 Candidates Tournament (together with Veselin Topalov, who already won the GP).

Caruana himself had Black against Wang Hao — for the sixth time in six mutual games! When the Chinese player went for 6.Na4 against the Grünfeld, Caruana

“found the only way not to [equalize], and was suffering throughout the game,”

as he put it himself.

Anish Giri was Black for the second day in a row, but this time he was more successful. He played a solid draw with the Petroff against Ruslan Ponomariov, and especially putting his queen to c5 (which he should have done also the other day!) was strong.

Leinier Dominguez turned 30 on Monday but before he got to celebrate, he drew an interesting Open Ruy Lopez with Hikaru Nakamura, who seems to be widening his repertoire more and more. Move 22 seems to be the novelty but the American knew a few more moves and held the draw comfortably.

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